The Norton Allen Basketry Collection

Abstract

����� Norton Allen lived in southern California and for many decades wintered in the deserts of the American Southwest. With few exceptions, the baskets he collected were made by native peoples of southern California, the Great Basin, and Arizona, especially the Tohono O’odham from the Gila Bend area. In 1998, his collection, which numbers eighty-seven items, was donated to the Riverside Municipal Museum (RMM) in Riverside, California. At the time of the donation, a six-page inventory of the collection was prepared (Moser 1997) that recorded information provided by Norton Allen, including the names of a few of the basket weavers or where the baskets were obtained, but the entries rarely exceed two sentences plus dimensions of the items. An early two-page document indicates that Allen purchased some of his baskets from another collector around 1950 (Huey n.d.). Other than these lists, Norton left behind no documentation of the baskets or their makers. According to Arizona State Museum Archivist Alan Ferg (2009), “there is essentially a total absence of pictures of Native Americans among Norton’s photos. . . . For all the time [the Allens] spent on the Tohono O’odham/Papago Reservation, I have not found a single picture of a Tohono O’odham. I don’t know if this was lack of interest, or some feeling that he shouldn’t photograph them.” We can only speculate on why no photos exist, but given Norton’s high regard for the Tohono O’odham, it is a reasonable inference that he may have felt it was intrusive to photograph his